Reading Medieval Siudies XL (2014)

The Weight of Love and the Anglo-Saxon Cold Water Ordeals

Thomas D. Hill Cornell University

The Cold Water Ordeals, which prescribe how an accused person was to be immersed in water and required to 'prove' his or her innocence by being accepted by the water, by sinking rather than floating, are very strange documents from the perspective of modern readers. Trial by ordeal generally is a practice which most modem scholars find strange and repugnant and while Cold Water Ordeals do not involve burning the accu,sed as the Boiling Water or Hot ordeals do, the idea that {he life of an accused person might hang on whether they sink or float in a pool or other body of water seems very problematic to modern rationalists. One fairly extended scene in Monty Pytbon and the Holy Grail, for example, concerns a debate about whether a water ordeal might prove the guilt or innocence of an accused witch. However repugnant, irrational and strange the logic of the Cold Water Ordeal might seem, such rituals were quite common in medieyal and early modern and persisted in folk belief at least until quite recently.' Since there are no classical or Biblical texts that might inspire or justify such ordeals, it is generally assumed that the cold water ordeals derive from native Anglo-Saxon or perhaps more generally Gennanie folklore and folk belief. One well known text which supports this II argument is the prose conclusion to Atlamit! in groenlenzca in which Gudrun after killing her children, feeding them to her husband and then killing him, goes to the sea and casts herself into it. She is attempting to kill herself as her Volsung predecessor Signy did, but while the flames killed and consumed Signy, the waters reject Gudrun who floats over the waves and is cast up in the land of J6nakr. J6nakr then marries her, begets children and thus begins another cycle of Volsung adventures. Guorun geee pli Iii seevar, er hon hafOi drepil Alia, geee ,il Ii seeinn ok vildifara ser. Hon maui eigi slJcqva. Rac hana yfir fioroinn a land !anaers kOllungs. Hann lecc he/mar. Peirra synir voru peil" S9rli ok Erpr ok HamiJir. 1

For discuss ion of swimming or 'fleeting ' witches, wh ich is one common fonn of the Cold Water Ordeals, see the article 'swinuning' in Rosse ll Hope Robbins, Th e Encyclopedia of and Demonology (New York: Crown Publishers, 1959), pp. 492-4. For a convenient listing of Cold Water Ordeals in a variety of different sources, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, revi sed edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958), iii , p. 393 ; H222, 'Ordcal by Water' . 2 All quotations of Eddic poetry and prose are from Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius hrsg. Gustav Neckel, rev. Hans Kuhn, fifth edn (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1983) by title, stanza and page number. Whether to include the prose text from which J am quoting as the conclusion to Atlamal in groenlellzco or as the introduction to GuorUnarkvQl is purely a matter of editorial discretion and editors differ conceming thi s question. Fra Guorull o , ~ 1, p. 263. -

THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 35

(Gudrun went then to the sea when she had killed Atli. She went out on the sea And wished to kill herself. She could not sink. The [sea] swept her across the fjord to the land of Jonakr, the King. He married her. Their children were Sorli, Erpr and Hambir). This moment is reprised in a difficult stanza in Guorunarkv9t. Gecc ec til strandar, gr9m varc nornom, vilda ek hrinda sldo grio jJeira; ho/u mik, me drecjJo, hdvar baror, jJvi ec land O/slec, al lifo skyldoc.'

(I went to the beach I was angry with the noms ] wished to thrust [myself] Into their harsh peace [?]. The high waves lifted me, they did not drown me So that I climbed on land, So that] must live). The dating of the Eddie texts is notoriously difficult. It is universally agreed, however, that the Eddie poems and the prose comments on them are older than the late-thirteenth- century manuscript in which they are preserved. Certainly some of the lore which is preserved in the Eddie corpus, the names of heroes and peoples, and certain motifs and narrative lines are very old indeed, but the date of the poems and prose texts as we have them is disputed. The correspondence, however, between this episode and the various Cold Water Ordeals is sufficiently striking - the idea that the water rejects the accursed one - that most scholars assume that these texts are related and that the account of Gudrun's miraculous survival is in effect a Cold Water Ordeal and is evidence that this idea was current at an early date­ whatever the date of Gu(JrUnarkvQI in its present form might be.' Jfthe Cold Water Ordeals were originally Germanic, they presumably originated during the pre-Christian period and were thus 'pagan' in origin. In the form in which we have them in Anglo-Saxon England, however, they are very much Christian rituals. The ritual includes a Mass during which the

3 Guon.'tnarkwlt, stanza 13, p. 266. 4 For commentary on this question, see The Poetic Edda: /, Heroic Poems, ed. by Ursula Dronke (Oxford; OUP, t 969), p. t47. 36 THOMAS D. HILL

accused receives communion after due warning about partaking of the sacrament if onc is in a state of serious sin and a series of prayers blessing and adjuring the waters by which the truth or falsehood of the accusation is to be revealed. The specific problem that I wish to discuss here is the explanation of the Cold Water rituals which is explicit in these texts and which concerns the question of why the water might ' reject ' the body ofa si nner. These texts, however, are not well known even among Anglo-Saxonists; and before focusing on this problem it is appropriate to quote that portion of the ritual in which the waters in which the accused is going to be immersed are adjured. I therefore quote the prayers 'conjuring' and 'adjuring' the water in which the accused is to be lowered from a text which occurs in a number of manuscripts and which Liebermann identifies as a Judicium Dei Ritua/e: Ka/twasser (Judgment of , Ritual; Cold Water). . Inc/pit adiurafio aquae. Deus, qui aquarum substantiam iudica tua exercens diluuti inundatione milia popu/orum interemisti et Noe iustum cum suis sa/uandunl censuisti, Deus qui in mari Rubro cuneos Egyptiorum inuo/uisti et agmina lsrahelitica inperterritG abire iussisti, uirtutem tuae benediction is his aquis infimdere eL nauum ac mirabile signum in eis ostendere digneris, ut innacentes a crimine furti - ue/ homicidii ue/ adu/terii aut aJterius.. naeui - cuius examinationem agimus, more aquae in se recipiant et in profundum pertrahant, conscios au/em huius criminis a se repel/ant atque reiciant nee patiantur recipere corpus, quod ab onere bonitatis euacua/um uen/us iniquitatis • et inane cons/ituit; quod care/ pondere uirtutis, careat pondere pro p ria e substantiae in aquis. Per dominum ... 5 (The adjuration of the water begins. Oh God, who using the nature of water, killed thousands of peoples by the inundation of the flood and judged Noe the just one and hi s [family] to be saved, God who enveloped the battalions of the Egyptians in the Red Sea and ordered the Israelite bands to go unafraid, deign to pour out the power of your blessing on these waters and to show a new and marvelous sign in them so that those innocent of the crime of theft or homicide or adultery or of another di sfigurement - whose examination we perform - [these waters] may receive in themselves in the manner of water and may draw [the innocents] to the depth; [but] [those] conscious of this crime may these waters repcl from themselves and may they reject them nor may they suffer to receive the body which emptied of the weight of goodness the wind of iniquity lifts up and makes empty; but what is wanting the weight of virtue may be wanting the weight of proper substance in the waters. Through the Lord ... ).

5 Die Gesetze del' Angelsachsen, ed. by Felix Liebermann (1903-16; repro Aalen: Scientia, 1960), i, p. 404; Judicium Dei Riluale: Ka/twasser, 20. THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 37

Another prayer identified as alia in the ritual, which presumably means it is an alternative invocation of the power of God, also alludes to the theme of the weight of love.

Adiuro Ie, creatura aquae, per Deum patrem et Filium et Spirilum sanc/unt , eL per tremendum diem judicii, et per duodecim aposlo/OS, et per septuaginta duos discipu/os, et per duodecim prophetas, et per viginti quatuor seniores, qui assidue Dominum laudan!, el per centum quadraginla quatuor milia, quae sequuntur Agnum, et per omnia agmina sanctorum angelorurn, archange/orum, thronorum, dominationum, principatuum, potestatum, virtu tum, Cherubin atque Seraph in, et per omnia milia sane/arum martyrum, virginum et confessorum. Adiuro Ie per sanguinem domini nostri lesu Christi, et per qu~tuor euangelia, et per quallior ellangelistas, necnon et per septuaginta duos /ihros Veleris ac Nov; Testamenti, el per omnes scriptores sanetos ac doetores eorUfn. Adiuro Ie per sanctam ecclesiam catha/jcarn, et per cornmunionem sanetorum, et per resurrectionem eorum, ut jias aqua exorcizata, adiurata et abfirmata adversus inimicum hominis diabolum, et adversus hominem, qui ab eo seductus furtum hoc - vel homicidium aut adu/terium - un,de ratio agilur, perpetravit, ut l1ullatenus eum in Ie submergi aul in profundum Irahi permittas, sed a te repel/as atque reicias, nee patiaris recipere corpus, quod ab onere bonitatis inane est factum; sed, quod caret pondere virtutis, careal pondere propriae substanciae in teo /nnocentes uero a praedicto crimine more aquae in Ie recipias et in profundum innocuos perlrahas. Per dominum nostrum. 6 ****** Post has autem coniuraliones aque exuantur homines, qui mittendi sunt in, propriis veslimenlis, et oseulentur singu/i euangelium el crucem Christi, et aqua benedicta super omnes aspergatur, et qui adsint omnes ieiunent, el sic proiciantur singuli in aquam. Et si submersi juerinl, inculpabiles reputenlur; si supernataverint, rei esse iudieenlur. (I adjure you, oh creature of water, by God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and by the fearful day of Judgment, and by the twelve apostles and by the seventy two disciples and by the twelve prophets and by the twenty-four elders who continually praise the Lord and by the one hundred and forty-four thousand who follow the Lamb, and by all the bands of holy angels, archangels,

6 Die Gesetze der Angelsachell, p. 405; ludicium Dei Rililale: Kaltwasser, '23. 38 THOMAS D. HILL

thrones, dominions, principates, powers, virtues, Cherubim and Seraphin, and by all the thousands of holy martyrs, virgins and confessors. I adjure you by the blood of our lord Jesus Christ, and by the four gospels and by the four evangelists and indeed by the seventy-two books of the Old and New Testament and by all the holy writers and tile teachers of those ones. I adjure you by the Holy Catholic Church, and by the communion of the saints, and by their resurrection, that you may be by water exorcized, adjured, and secured against the enemy of man, the and against [any] man, who seduced by him, has committed this theft, homicide or adultery, which is to be adjudicated, that in no way you may permit him to be submerged or to be drawn to the depth but you repel and reject [him] from yourself nor do you allow [yourself] to receive [his or her] body which has become empty of the we ight of goodness - but [that body] which is wanting the weight of virtue may be wanting th e weight of proper substance in you. May you receive those innocent of the aforesa id crime into yourself in th e manner of water and may you draw the harmless ones into [your] depth. Through our lord ... ). ****** (After these conjurations, however, ofthe water, the men are stripped oftheir own garments who are to be sent into the water, and each one kisses the gospel and ~, the Cross 0/ Christ and holy water is sprinkled over them ali and ali who may be present/ast alld thus they are individually cast into the water. And ifthey sink, they are considered guiltless; if however they float, they are judged to be guilty). - As I have said, the ritual itsel f is in all probability pagan and Germanic in origin, but the Christian clerics who framed these rituals and who wrote these prayers were attempting to harmonize pagan ritual and Christian thought and one point which they were attempting to explain is how and why sanctified water might receive the innocent and reject the guilty. This is actually an interesting problem - hundreds of years later a learned Scot, King James r of England and the VI of Scotland, raised the same question concerning the analogous ritual of witch-dunking and proposed that water was a pure element which was used in the ritual of and it therefore rejected the guilty body of the witch who had

7 In order to distingu ish clearl y the instructions for the physical acts which the priest and the various part icipants in the ritual should perform from the prayers which the priest utters, I am italicizing the translation of the fonner. -

THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 39

foresworn her baptism. 8 The Anglo-Saxon clerics who shaped this ritual, however, offered a different explanation. Weight, heaviness and lightness, are widely current metaphors in virtually all the European languages and no doubt beyond and such metaphors were important in Christian tradition. One of the most prominent instances of such metaphoric usage is the conception of the gravity, the weight, of sin, This figure is still current in religious and to some degree legal usage in that we still speak of a grave sin and the association of weight with sin and depression and lightness with joy and freedom is current in American popular idiom. There is also, however, another pattern of imagery which the author of this prayer and the authors and redactors of the analogous ones, seem to have known - the theme of the weight of love. Pondus meum amor meus; eo leror, quocumque [eror (My weight is my love; I am borne by it wherever I am borne), as Augustine says in a famous passage in the Confessiones' The philosophical implications of the idea of the weight of the soul, and the weight of goodness are an important theme in Augustine's thought and in Neoplatonic thought generally.'" An important Biblical text is that seminal verse, Wisdom 11: 21: Omnia in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti (thou hast ordered all things in measure, number, and weight), in which weight, often glossed as the Holy Spirit, is associated with the order of the universe. Similarly the idea of lightness, of excessive levity, is associated with being in a state of sin. To cite the first stanza from a well known medieval Latin poem, the mock Con/essiones of the Archipoeta:

8 Thus given the crucial question of how judges are to determine whether a given individual is a witch, James comments: And besides that, there are two other good he lpes that may be vsed fo r their trial: the one is the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblcness thereof. The other is their fleeting on the water: ... it appcares that God hath appoynted (for a super-naturall signe of the monstruous impietie of the Witches) that the water shal refuse to receiue them in her bosom, that haut: shaken off them the sacred Water of Baptisme, and wilfullie refused the benefite thereof: No not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (tmetten and torture them as ye please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime) albeit the women kinde especially, be able other-waies to shed teares at euery light occasion when they will, yea, although it were dissemblingly like the Crocodiles. Daemon%gie. cap. vi, in Minor Prose Works ofJames VI and I, ed. by James Craigie and Alexander Law, Scottish Text Society, series 4, xiv (Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1982), p. 53. 9 All quotations of the Confessions of Augustine are from Augustine: Corifessions, ed. by James Joseph O'Donnell, 3 vols (Oxford: OUP, 1992), by book, chapter and page number: XIII, 9; 1,187. See also Augustine: Confessions, IV, 14; De eivitate Dei, XI, 28. 10 One immediate source for citations and discussion of this theme is the extended note in O'Donnell's commentary: Augustine: Confessions, III, pp. 356-59. 40 THOMAS D. HILL

Estuans intrinsecus ira vehementi in amaritudine loquar mee menti: Jactus de materia levis elementi folio sum similis de quo ludunt venti.11

(Raging inwardly with vehement anger, I speak in bitterness about my mind ... I am made of matter of a light element I am like a leaf with which the winds play). These ideas underlie the language of the Cold Water Ordeal texts which I have cited. The cleric prays that the sanctified water will receive and welcome the innocent who are defined by their love which bears weight and will also reject thc sinful who are light, who lack gravity, and who will float like a leaf when tested. One immediate question is whether the clauses alluding to the theme of the weight of love are unique to the Anglo-Saxon Cold Water Ordeals or whether this motif is more widely current since trial by ordeal and Cold Water Ordeals specifically were widely practised all ovcr Europe in the early . The short answer is that I do not know - a preliminary search in Karl Zeumer's Formulae Merowingici et Karoli Aevi has not turned up any parallels and searches in the electronic databases such as the Library of Latin or the Chadwick Healy electronic Pa/ro/agia Latina have not found comparable texts.1 2 But

11 Die Gedichte des Archipoeta ed. by Heinrich Watcnphul and Heinrich Krefeld (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitiitsverlag, 1958), p. 73. I quote the first stanza of the poem sometimes identified by its first line Estuans inlrinseeus ira vehementi and sometimes as the Confessio or Confession of the Archpoet. While the poem is later than the Anglo-Saxon rituals which I am citing the figure of the 'lightness' or the sinner is a traditional one - see Gregory the Great (Gregorius Magnus), Moralia in lob. XI, xliv, (60), CCSL 143 A, pp. 619-20, on Job 13, 25 , Quid est enim homo nisi folium, qui uidelieet in paradiso ab arbore eeeidit? Quid est nisi folium qui temptationis uento rapitur et desideriorum flatibus leuatur? Mens quippe humana quot temptationes patitur, quasi tot flatibus mouetur. Hane etenim plerumque ira perturbat; cum reeedit ira, sueeedit inepta laetifia. Luxuriae stimulis urguetur, aestu auaritiae longe late que ad ambienda quae terrena sunt tenditur. Aliquando hane superbia eleuat, aliquando uero inordinatus timor in injimis deponit. Quia ergo tot temptationum flatibus leuatur el ducilur, reele folio homo comparatur. Vnde bene quoque per Isaiam dicitur: eecidimus quasifolium uniuersi et iniquitates noslrae quasi uentus abslulerunt nos. Quasi uen/us quippe nos iniquitas abstulit, qui nuflo jixos uirtutis pondere in uanam elationem leuauit. Bene aulem post folium eliam stipula appellatur homo. 12 Formulae Merowingiei et Karolini Aevi, ed. by Karolus Zevmer [Karl Zeumer], 2 vo!s. Monumenta Germaniae Historiea Legum Seetio V, Formulae (Hanover: Hahn, 1883). -

THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 41

of course even in the electronic databases unless one has the good fortune to find the exact phrasing it is possible to miss important parallels and a great deal of material relating to the ordeal tradition has either not been edited or edited in relatively inaccessible places. I would be surprised if the association of the theme of the weight oflove and the Cold Water Ordeals was limited to these texts, but I cannot demonstrate the wider currency of the motif at present. One might not expect echoes of a sophisticated Augustinian philosophical theme in legal texts concerned with a Christianized version of an originally pagan ritual, but the conceptual and linguistic parallels between the rituals and the various versions of the theme of the weight of love are very clear. Finding patristi.c echoes in Anglo-Saxon liturgical texts is hardly surprising, but what seems to me particularly interesting about these parallels is that Anglo-Saxon clerics needed or felt they needed a 'scientific' explanation of how the Cold Water Ordeals worked - they wished to explain to themselves and their audiences how and why the sanctified water might reveal the truth or falsehood of an accusation and idea of the weight of love offered a plausible gloss. Germanic lawmakers might simply accept the logic of a ritual that may have been very old indeed by the .time these prayers were composed, but Christian clerics needed something more, and the moral and philosophical theme of the weight of love answered any questions they might have. Reading Medieval Studies XL (2014)

'The crimes by which Wultbald ruined himself with his lord': The Limits of State Action in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Richard Abels The United States Naval Academy

Historiographically, J. H. Round may have defeated Edward Freeman on most of their myriad points of contention, but on one major issue, the strength and sophistication of the Anglo-Saxon state on the eve of the Conquest, he lost decisively. Despite the best efforts of R. Allen Brown to defend Round's views, the historical orthodoxy that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century was Freeman's,' namely that Anglo-Saxon royal governance was in the late tenth and eleventh centuries a mature and powerful institution that (in Joel Rosenthal's words) 'provided the basement and a good deal of the above­ ground levels in the house that Duke William is generally credited with building'.' If anything, over the last three decades of historical writing, the power and effectiveness of royal government in Anglo-Saxon England has grown to a degree that would have startled Freeman. Surveying the England that William conquered, Prof. James .Campbell, the leading advocate of the 'maximali st' view of the Anglo~Saxon state, finds a country effectively governed from above through the agency of royal officials and the mechanisms of administrative routines. Late Saxon England, as he describes it, was divided into , and the shires into hundreds. Almost all land was assessed in hides and the like for purposes of taxation and service ... That the country was divided into shires, each under a royal official, the sheriff, gave a degree of general control that made uniformity in administrative action possible. The system of assessment enabled kings to levy taxes on the country as a whole, sometimes at very high rates England was so organized as to give its eleven th ~century rulers powers which others lacked? 'Maximalists' can also point to royal control over coinage so firm that it permitted periodic withdrawal of currency and recoinage; to the development of a centralized royal chancery; to a unified military system in which recruitment of soldiers was treated like a land tax; and

Joel T. Rosenthal, 'A Hi storiographical Survey: Anglo-Saxon Kings and Kingship since World War II' , Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985): 72-93, at p. 81. 2 lames Campbell, 'The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative History of Western Europe' (1980), repr. in Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London: HambJedon, 1986), pp. 171 -2. This is a theme that recurs often in Campbell's work. See, e.g., in the same volume, 'Observations on Eng lish Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century' (1975), repro in Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History, pp. 155-70, and the essays collected in Campbell , The Anglo-Saxon State (London : HambJedon and London, 2000). THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTION IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 43

to a system of cadastral assessment based at least roughly upon the value of landed estates.] In short, to quote James Campbell once more, 'the administration of the late Anglo-Saxon

state was commandingly effective' ,4 Similar arguments have been made for the effectiveness of, and royal control over, the Anglo-Saxon legal system. This case has been most vigorously pressed by the late (and much missed) Patrick Wormald in a series of learned articles and in his magnum opus, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). Wormald found the origins of the English Common Law not in the innovations of Henry I or Henry II but in the Anglo-Saxon legal system that they had inherited. 'There is a plausible connection', Wormald averred, 'betwee~ the vigour of the pre-conquest judicial regime, unparalleled in the Europe of its time, and the fact that in England alone were kings able to greet the advent of Learned Laws with an indigenous system, over which they claimed and mostly achieved a monopoly control'.' Through a careful analysis of charter evidence, Wonnald undertook to overturn Pollock's and Maitland's conception of Anglo­ Saxon law which defined wrongs as torts rather than crimes, and to refute their presentation of Anglo-Saxon legal procedure as 'archaic Germanic', 'rude and simple', in which 'the forms were sometimes complicated, always stiff and unbending'; mistakes in form, 'fatal at every stage'; and 'trial of questions of fact, in anything like the modern sense,

3 On royal regulation of the currency, sec Ian Stewart, 'Coinage and Recoinage after Edgar's Reform ' , in Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage: In Memory of Bror Emil Hildebrand, cd . by Kenneth Jonsson (Stockholm: Svenska numismatiska fOreningcn, 1990), pp. 465-85: Mark Blackburn, 'Mints, Burhs, and the Grately Code, cap. 14.2', in The Defence of We~·sex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications, ed. by David Hill and Alexander R. Rumble (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 160-75. For governmental influence upon economic development, see J. R. Maddicott, 'Trade, Industry and the Wealth of King Alfred' , Pas! and Present , 123 (1989): 3-51; S. R. H. Jones, 'Transaction Costs, Institutional Change, and the Emergence of a Market Economy in Later Anglo­ Saxon England' ,Economic History Review, 46 (1993): 658-678 . For development of a royal chancery, see S. D. Keynes, 'Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)', in Anglo-Norman Studies X: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1987, ed. by R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), pp. 185-222. For bookland and military organization, see Richard Abels, 'Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Anglo­ Saxon England', in Anglo-Norman Studies VlI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference , 1984, ed. by R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985) , pp. 1-25; Abels , Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Los Angeles and London: University of California Press , 1988). For hidage assessments and value: F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond; Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge: CUP, 1897), pp. 532-45; Abels, 'Bookland and Fyrd Service', pp. 15- 25; Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation , pp. 97-108; J. McDonald and G. D. Snooks, 'Were the Tax Assessments of Domesday England Artificial? The Case of Essex', Economic History Review, 38 (1985): 353-73; McDonald and Snooks, Domesday Economy: A New Approach to Anglo-Norman H;story (Oxford: OUP, 1986). 4 James Campbell, 'Hundreds and Leets: A Survey with Suggestions' , in Medieval East Angiia, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). pp. 153-67, at p. 167. 5 Patrick Wormald, 'Giving God and King their Due' (1997), repr. in Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval We.\·t: Law as Text, image and Experience (London: Hambledon, 1999), pp. 333-55. 44 RICHARD ABELS

unknown' .6 Wonnald demolished this straw man and offered in its place a radically different model for Anglo-Saxon legal procedure and the settlement of disputes in which oaths mattered, but 'so did what modern justice would consider evidence, and such evidence was preferably in writing'.' Suits took place jn royal courts - and Wormald reminds us that the courts of hundred and were in fact 'royal' - presided over by agents of the Crown, and conducted according to procedures laid down by royal authority.' The judgments of these courts were enforced by royal agents to the benefit of the Crown, which profited through fines, regardless of whether the accuser or accused prevailed. The late Anglo-Saxon state as it was revealed to Wormald through the charters played 'an aggressive and interventionist part in [legal] proceedings'.9 Kings and their officials did not merely referee rival claims; they defined and punished crime. For Wormald, the large number of estates recorded in tenth- and eleventh-century charters as forfeited to the king is particularly illuminating, in contrast to Ottonian and Salian Germany, the only polity in tenth- and eleventh -century Europe that rivaled the late Anglo-Saxon state in terms of centralized authority_ 'We have moved', Wormald asserted, 'from a polity where injury is redressed to one with a developed notion of crime and punishment.' , 10 This was even true for the bloodfeud." 'Engli sh kings', Wormald musically intoned, 'no longer merely wrote themselves into the discords of society. They in effect fe-orchestrated the whole symphony of feud in a royal key'." From the vantage point of the charters and law codes, Wormald could see the late Anglo-Saxon 'state' beginning to claim Weber's 'monopoly of legitimate violence' , 13 These conclusions, Wormald insisted, did not rest upon law codes or other such expressions of royal ideology; they emerged from a close study of charters through which one could gl impse the realities of Anglo-Saxon law. 'It is not because kings made rules for the control of feud, the holding of courts and the punishment of "crimes", which might even encompass "false" pleading, that I believe these things to have happened', Wormald explains. 'It is because I find them happening in ground-level conflicts' , 14 Wormald's analysis of the charter evidence for lawsuits led him

6 F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History oJ English Law to the Accession of Edward I. 2 vols, rei ssue ed. by S. F. C. Milsom (Cambridge: CUP, 1968), i , pp. 38-41 , quoted by Wonnald, ' Charters. Law and the Settlement of Disputes', in Legal Culture, p. 290. 7 Wormald, 'Charters' , in Legal Culture, p. 309. 8 Wormald, 'Charters' and 'Gi vi ng God and King their Due' , in Legal Culture, pp. 306, 348. 9 Wormald, 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture, p. 309. 10 Wormald, 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture, p. 342. II Wormald, 'Chalters', in Legal Culture, p. 309. 12 Wormald, 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture, p. 34 1. 13 Wormald , 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture , pp. 340-1. THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTION IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 45 to the same conclusion as James Campbell: that the government of the late Anglo-Saxon state was powerful and often played an active role in the lives of ordinary Englishmen. But the charter evidence is not quite so clear cut as Wormald made it out to be. Indeed, there is no better evidence for both the aspirations and limitations of the late Anglo­ Saxon state than an Old English memorandum attached to a Latin charter, Sawyer 877, issued by King IEthelred II in 993. The story it tells of a king's thegn named Wulfbald who repeatedly defied the judgments of royal courts, including a meeting of the witan, serves as a much needed corrective to the sometimes exaggerated claims made for the judicial power of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Sawyer 877 reminds us that just because a public court pronounced judgment does not mean that the judgment was necessarily executG!d. As Paul Hyams has recently warned, however, one should be cautious about assuming that the legislative aspirations of tenth-century English kings and their clerical advisers translated into 'achievements of power', especially given 'absence of a royal technology of power to facilitate the implementation of the king's orders far from his physical presence'. This was particularly true for disputes among powerful local landowners that did not directly involve royal lands or create a major breach of the king's peaceY A distinctive feature of the charters issued by King IEthelred II Unraed is that they often include explanations of how the king obtained the land that he was granting. In a number of instances the narratives refer to crimes committed by the former owners that led to forfeiture of the land. '6 iEthelred's charters are not unique in referring to crimes that led to an estate's forfeiture. One of the most discussed Anglo-Saxon charters, Sawyer 1444, dated to 's reign, describes in detail the conviction, forfeiture, outlawry, and pardon of a king's thegn, Helmstan, and the subsequent dispute over land at Fonthill which Helmstan used to purchase ealdorman Ordlaf's support. What is unusual is the regularity with which references to crime and forfeiture appear in the charters from iEthelred's reign. As Simon Keynes suggests, these accounts of the crimes that had led to the land coming into the king's hands were inserted into the charters 'to strengthen the new owner's title to the estate', which was particularly desirable in the late tenth century, given the reaction against the Benedictine reform during the brief reign of IEthelred's predecessor, Edward the Martyr, and the political in-fighting that marked much of IEthelred's rule. Keynes is also correct, I believe, in associating the appearance of these

14 Wormald, 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture, p. 352. 15 Peter Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charfers: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical SOclety, 1968); Paul Hyams , Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ilhaca: Cornell University Press , 2003), p. 101. 16 S. Keynes, 'Crime and Punishment in the Reign of iEthelred the Unready', in People and Places in Northern Europe 500-/600: &says in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, ed. by I. Wood and N. Lund (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), pp . 67-81 , at pp. 76-77.

:llffll

. . ~ . 46 RICHARD ABELS explanatory statements with the growing emphasis in this period with the process known as team, that is, 'vouching to warranty, by which the possessor of property claimed by someone else would cite the person from whom he had himself acquired it to prove that the property had been that person's to give or sell in the first place' n But to my eye what they most resemble are the stories in the near contemporary Libellus /Etheiwoldi and in later monastic histories explaining how the monks acquired (or lost) lands. As Sarah Foot has argued, charters are also a form of historical writing; those that contain embedded narratives, such as Sawyer 877, 'do so to reconcile discord and prevent future dispute .... These texts legislate for the future by recounting the past in such a way as to legitimize and make necessary the present act of giving' . 18 As with the Libellus and monastic histories, the purpose of the narratives embedded in charters was to shape and fix historical memory in favor of the beneficiaries, so that when a future claim arose against their possession, they would not only have the charter as evidence, but public memory on their side as well, which would be especially important if the claimants could produce their own charters giving title to the disputed land. The lengthy, vernacular embedded narrative in Sawyer 877 is extraordinary for the light it sheds on criminal justice, land law, self help, and, in particular, the strengths and limitations of Anglo-Saxon mechanisms of royal governance in the late tenth century. This charter records in Latin a grant by King Aithelred II to his mother Ailfthryth of an estate at Brabourne and five other properties in Kent. adding up to sixteen sulungs of land in all, that had been forfeited to the crown by a king's thegn named Wulfbald because of the misdeeds that he had committed. The Latin charter concludes with a statement (in Latin) that the king rightfully possessed these estates 'by the most just judgment of all my chief men ' on account of the crimes committed by Wulfbald. What follows then is a detailed exposition in Old English of those crimes and of Wulfbald's repeated defiance of royal justice. The Old English memorandum reads as follows: These are the crimes by which Wulfbald ruined himself with his lo rd [wyp his hia/ord /orworhte], namely first, when his father had died, he went to his stepmother's estate and took everything that he could find there, inside and out, great and small. Then the king sent to him and commanded him to restore the plundered goods [reaflacj; then he ignored that, and his wergeld was assigned to the king. And the king sent to him a second time and repeated his command; and then he ignored that, and for the second time his wergeld was assigned to the king. On top of all this, he rode and seized the land of his kinsman,

17 Keynes. 'Crime and Punishment in the Reign of iEthelred the Unready' , p. 77. 18 Libellus /Ethelwoldi in Liber Eliensis trans. by Janet Fairweather (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005); Sarah Foot , 'Reading Anglo-S axon Charters', in Narrative and History in the Medieval West, ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler and Ross Balzaretti (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 39-65, at p. 62. THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTION IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 47

Brihtmaer of Bourne. Then the king sent to him and commanded him to give up the land ; then he ignored that, and hi s wergeld was assigned to the king for the third time . The king sent to him once again and commanded him off; then he ignored that, and his wergeld was assigned to the king for a fourth time. Then the great meeting was held at London. IEthelwine was there and all the king's councillors. Then all the councillors who were there, both ecclesiastics and laymen, assigned the whole ofWultbald's property to the king, and himself likewise to be disposed of as the king desired, whether to live or die. And he [Wuijbald] retained all this, uncompensatedJor, up to the time oj his death (7 he heeJne eo lie jJis ungebet ojJe he JorjJJertf) [emphasis added]. And after he was dead, 011 top of all this, his widow along with her child went and slew Eadmrer the king's thegn , Wultbald's ullcle's son, and fifteen of his companions on the estate at Bourne, which he had held by plunder, despite the king. And then Archbishop IEthelgar had the great sy nod at London, and he himself and all hi s property were assigned to the king ,, 9 The introductory words of the charter, 'These are the crimes by which Wultbald ruined himself with his lord ', ring ironic. The charter tells us that Wultbald, ignored two royal commands to return property that he had looted from hi s stepmother's estate, and, as a result, hi s wergild was assigned to the Kin g twicc. He then ignored two additional royal commands to restore an estate that he had seized from a kinsman. Each time hi s wergild was again assigned to the King. Hi s contumacy finally provoked the King 's Witall in London, presided over by Earldorman IEthclwine of East Anglia, to assign all his property to the King and place Wultbald himself in the King's mercy. And yet, despite having had his wergild assigned to the King four times, hi s estates legally confiscated, and hi s person placed at the mercy of the King , Wultbald died in possession of the disputed lands and property without having made any amends. Wulfbald's death set off a bloody battle over the estate of Bourne, pitting hi s widow and their son against Wultbald 's uncle's son. Only after the deaths of a king's thegn and hi s fifteen companions, and yet another judgment by a second great council in London , thi s time presided over by Archbishop IEthelgar, did Wultbald's possessions finally pass into the hands of the king. The historical context for Wultbald 's story can be established from internal evidence within the charter. The great London synod that posthumously condemned Wultbald took place between November 988 and February 990, the dates of Archbishop IEthelgar's brief

19 The ch arter is edited by Sean Miller, Anglo-Saxon Charters IX : Charters of the New Min ster, Win chester (Oxford: OUP, 2001), pp . 144-8 (no. 3 1). and A. G. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge: CUP, 1956), no . 63 (with translation). I have followed Dorothy Whitelock's translation in Eng!i.\·h Historical Documents Volume I c.500-1042 (Oxford: OUP, 1955) [hereafter EHD I], pp. 53 1-4 (no. 120). with some emendations. r

48 RICHARD ABELS

episcopate, and Wulfbald's crimes probably should be assigned to the first decade of King fEthelred's reign.20 There are few sources for this period, and few events mark it. As is well known, Viking raids started again in 980, but they were small and sporadic and probably had little impact except in their immediate locale. The one great dramatic event, other than the murder of ;Ethelred's brother and predecessor, King Edward, in 978, was the young king's ravaging of the diocese of Rochester in 986. The act was in response to Bishop ;Elfstan's dispossession of One of ;Ethelred's minis!ri of an estate that belonged to the Church of Rochester but which the king had granted to this retaineL" The ravaging of a borough or shire was the most extreme weapon in the royal arsenal of coercion and punishment in late Anglo-Saxon England, and ;Ethelred, ten years later, repented of using it against the Church of Rochester in support of a man who had taken advantage Of his youth and inexperience and proved to be 'the enemy of God almighty and the whole people' (dei omnipotentis ac tolius populi inimico) by killing a royal reeve who tried to interfere with hi s many acts of theft of plunder.22 It is telling that we see here the King employing the same sort of extra-judicial violence in a dispute over the possession of land as Wulfbald and his widow were to exercise on a more modest scale. Sawyer 877, with its tale of unpunished crime, self-help remedies, and violence, clearly represents a challenge to the 'maximalist' position. 'The major "interest of this document', Dorothy Whitelock explained in the first volume of English Historical Documents in 1955, 'is the picture it gives of the weakness of Ethelred's regime' ?3 Accordingly, there have been attempts in recent years to recast the charter. Patrick Wormald, for instance, emphasized that the legal procedures and penalties outlined in the charter are consistent with those appearing in the law codes of fEthelred and Cnut. He found it significant that Sawyer 877 used the word reaflac for th e goods Wulfbald took from his stepmother, and that the penalty assessed against Wulfbald for this robbery was forfeiture of his wergild, since both the term and the penalty appear in II Cnut 63. Wormald also points out that II Cnut 19 legislates for disputes over property, such as Wulfbald's with his kinsmen, in which the possessor of the property refuses multiple royal summonses .24 In arguing this, however, Wormald finessed the specific requirements of the law, which specifies four summonses rather than the two for each offense as in the charter and has nothing about forfeiture of wergild," Wormald also ignored entirely Wulfbald's successful

20 Miller, Anglo-Saxon Charters IX, p. 151. 21 Ann Williams, I'Ethelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London: Hambledon and London, 2003), pp. 26-27. 22 Sawyer 893. See comments by Williams, I'Ethelred, pp. 26-27 ; Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King /Elhelred 'the Unready ' (978-1016): A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge: CUP, 1980), pp. t84-5. 23 EHD /, no. 120,53 I. THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTtON IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 49 defiance of the royal will. Peter Kitson and Ryan Lavelle recently tackled the latter problem. Both , in etfect, deny that Wulfbald did successfully defy the king. In Kitson 's reconstruction of events, Wulfbald paid his wergild on all four occasions but refused to give up the disputed property. Kitson (in the words of Sean Miller) 'recasts the story as one of a man of the world who expects to be able to get away with anything provided he pays for it rather than a minor lord defying all royal authority'." Both Kitson and Lavelle claim, moreover, that Wulfbald was executed shortly after his life was judged forfeit by the London council over which ealdorman ,iEthelwine presided. Kitson's and Lavelle's reinterpretation of Sawyer 877 seems to me , however, to be wrong on all counts. Not only does it ignore the plain language of the charter. - And he [Wulfbaldl retained all this, uncompensated for, up'to the time of his death (7 he heefne ealle pis ungebet ope he forjJJerJ) - but it would have Wulfbald paying, without the help of kinsmen, enormous sums of money for his defiance of the King's orders. Wulfbald's property and the designation of the King as his lord argue for his status as a King's thegn. If so, the payment of four wergelds would have amounted to £240, far more than the disputed land was worth. Simon Keynes' reading of Sawyer 877 is closer to the mark. Keynes admitted that on its face, Sawyer 877 seems to reflect badly on King iEthelred 's government, at least in th e early years of the reign, and accepted the charter's evidence for the unpunished defiance of royal su mmonses and legal judgments. He rejected, however, that such things were in any way unique to iEthelred's judicial regime. 'Wulfbald's repeated disregard of royal commands', Keynes pointed out, 'reminds one of the difficulties which earlier tenth­ century kings had experienced in bringing powerful men to justice, and of the provision which they made for persistent offenders; so it is possible that Wulfbald's defiance of authority reflects weakness inherent in the legal system itself, rather than the inability of a particular king to enforce the law' .27 The difficulties that tenth-century kings experienced in dealing with powerful, defiant criminals are reflected in the legislation of King Athelstan. IV Athelstan 3, for example, posits that there are those who are so rich or belong

24 Wonnald, 'Giving God and King their Due', in Legal Culture, p. 351. 25 As does Miller, Anglo-Sa.xon Chaners IX, p. 151. II Cn 19 reads: 'And no one shall make distraint of property either within the shire or outside it, until he has appealed for justice three times in the hundred court. § I. If on the third occasion he does not obtain justice, he shall go the fourth occasion to the shire court, and the shire court shall appoint a day when he shall issue his summons for the fourth time. §2 And if this summons fails, he shall get leave, either from the one co un or the other, to take his own measures for the recovery of his property' . Cf. U As 3: 'He who applies to the king before he pleads as often as is required for justice at home, shall pay the same fine as the other would have had to pay if he had refused him justice'. 26 Peter Kitson, A Guide to Anglo-Saxon Charters (forthcoming), cited by Mi ller, Anglo-Saxon Charter.l· IX , p. t5t. 50 RICHARD ABELS to so powerlul a kindred that they cannot be restricted from crime or from protecting or harbouring criminals?8 One might add that the power of kings to enforce their will over their ostensible agents was also limited. I remember how amused I was when researching the activities of WiJliam the Conqueror's sheriffs to discover a royal writ to Archbishop Lanfranc, dated to around 1082, ordering the sheriff of Cambridgeshire, Picot, to destroy the mill he had constructed in the borough, because it was damaging the mill belonging to the burgesses. By the time of the Domesday Inquest Picot had three mills in Cambridge

'which have taken away the pasture and destroyed many houses' ,29 To be sure, the unpunished defiance ofWulfbald is anomalous in the charter evidence, but, as the law codes suggest, it was probably not all that unusual in legal disputes. The reason that it appears so is the bias of the surviving evidence: when royal charters recount lawsuits, it is to explain how the land came into royal hands. This means that lawsuits in which the king had no direct interest usually did not find their way into charter memoranda. Nor did lawsuits in which the wrong-doer remained successfully defiant to the end. Sawyer 877 is unusual in that it concerns an intra-familial dispute that later exploded into a major breach of the king's peace. The people whom Wulfbald wronged were his stepmother and his un cle Brihtmrer, and his actions are best thought of as help remedies in a di sputed inheritance. It is also perhaps significant that the disputes in Sawyer 877 involved the contested rights of widows. Just as Wulfbald looted the estate of his stepmother after the death of his father, so Wulfbald's widow and her child attacked Eadmer and his companions in Bourne.30 An intra-familial dispute of this sort was less likely than inter­ familial disputes to pull in outside parties by pitting families against one another or to draw the attention of a great lord and bring about his intervention. Anglo-Saxon kings were

27 Keynes, 'Crime and Punishment', p. 79. 28 The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. and trans. by F. L. Attenborough (Cambridge: CUP, 1922), pp. 146-7: 'If there is anyone so rich or belong to so powerful a kindred that he cannot be restricted from crime or from protecting or harbouring criminals ... he shall be led out of his native district with his wife and children, and all his goods, to any part of the kingdom which the king chooses, be he noble or commoner, whoever he may be ... And henceforth, let him never be encountered by anyone in the district; otherwise he shall be treated as thief caught in the act'. See also III As 6 and, esp. VI As 8.2 29 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: Th e Acta of William 1 (1066-1087), ed. by David Bates (Oxford: OUP, 1998), no. 126; DB i. 1891'. As sheriff, Picot was notoriously rapacious. The monk of Ely remembered him as 'a starving lion, a footloose wolf, a deceitful fox, a muddy swine, an impudent dog'. Liber Eliensis, book 2, chap. 131, trans. by Fairweather, p. 250. Interestingly, King William's response to the many complaints which the abbot of Ely brought against Picot was to order the sheriff to recognize the abbey's lordship over the thegn land tenements he had seized and to provide the abbot with knight service the abbey owed to the Crown. Liber Eliensis, book 2, chap. 134 , pp. 259-60. For Picot, see Richard Abels, 'Sheriffs, Lord-Seeking and the Norman Settlement of the South-East Midlands', in Anglo-Norman Studies, 19. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1996, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp. 33-4. THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTION IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 51

certainly conce rned about kinsmen aiding onc another in criminal enterprises and protecting each other from the law; they showed, however, no interest in actively refereeing disputes among kin smen unless they had something to gain thereby_ The shire court was an arena in which Wulfbald 's kin smen could express in public their grievances. but those grievances , even if justified, were of in sufficient interest to the royal sheriff to motivate him to expend time and effort on enforcing the judgments of the courts. Self-help was even written into law. [[ Cnut 19 decrees that no one is to make distraint of property (name) without first appealing to the shire court four times. If the fourth summons fails, 'he shall get leave , either from the onc court or the other, to take his own measures for the recovery of his property'." Wultbald died in possession of hi s property with hi s crimes ungebet because these crimes were only against hi s own relat ives. ' What finally stirred the 'state' into action was the killing of Eadmrer and fifteen of his companions. Eadmrer's seizure of the manor of Bourne after the death of hi s uncle Wultbald was, again, a self-help remedy, as was the response of Wulfbald's widow. The battle that ensued between their supporters, however, constituted a breach of the king's peace that could not go unnoticed or unpunished. In late tenth-century England, all criminal acts, at least conceptua ll y, constituted treason, as they involyed breaking an oath of loyalty to the king extracted from all free men ." But before the deaths at Bourne, the king 's interest in what amounted to an intra-familial di spute had been incidental; now it was central. The posthumous judgment against Wultbald encompassed not only hi s widow but his whole kindred. Even those who had suffered at hi s hands lost out, as all Wultbald's holdings, including those claimed by his kinsmen, were forfeited to the king. As I mentioned earlier, more than anything else, the closest analogue to the Old English memorandum of Sawyer 877 is the late tenth-century Libel/us ;£thelwoldi. This work consists of a series of narratives explaining how Bi shop k:thelwold obtained land for the monks of Ely, and how hi s purchases and donations to the monastery were defended by the monks after the death of King Edgar. Unlike the King in his charters, Bishop IEthelwold and the monks did not always emerge triumphant and in possession of the land. Eadmrer's seizure of Bourne upon Wultbald's death is closely paralleled by a number of

30 NOle the special protections affo rded widows in lEthelred's and Cnu t's codes (V Alr 21 =VI Alr 26 , VI Atr 39= 11 en 52, VI Alr 47). See Marie-Franr;oise Alamichel , Widows in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Britain (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008), p. 9 1. 31 A. J, Robertson , The Laws o/the Kings of Englandfrom Edmund TO Henry 1 (Cambridge: CUP, 1925), pp. 182-3. 32 Patrick Wormald , 'Frederic Maitland and the Earliest English Law ' and 'Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance ', in Legal Culture, pp. 45-69, 359-82; David Pratt , 'Written Law and the Communication of Authority in Tenth-Century England', in England and the Continent: Studies in Hon our of Wilh elm Levison (1876-1947), ed. by D. Rollason. C. Leyser, and H. Williams (Turnhom: Brepols, 2010), pp. 37-38.

'fllllllfl' 52 RICHARD ABELS

cases in the Libellus. A man named Thurferth, for example, took by force from the monks two estates in Norfolk which, many years before, had been forfeited to King Edmund because of the crimes of its owner and which subsequently had been given to the abbey by King Edgar." In the case of five hides at Brandon and Livermere, Suffolk, the monks had to depend on divine vengeance to recover their property. Despite having vouched these estates to warranty' in the witness of the whole hundred' , the monks nevertheless lost them to [ngulf who took them 'forcibly and unjustly'. Only after Ingulf, his widow, and his son all died in quick succession did the monks regain their land in the form of a donation from ]ngulf's brother, 'who feared things would turn out similarly for himself'.34 The monastic author of the LibeLLus composed a narrative of the actions through which Bishop IEthelwold obtained land for Ely and the means by which the monks defended those acquisitions against claims for the same reason that monasteries, if need be, commissioned the forgery of charters. Both were mechanisms for shaping historical memory. The embedded narratives in IEthelred's charters served the same function: they were mini-histories meant to be read aloud in court, so that the claims within the charter could be further reinforced by appeal to known historical 'fact'. The purpose of this paper was not to challenge the characterization of the late Anglo­ Saxon polity as a 'state' , nor to deny the precocity and relative sophjstication of its administration.35 Tenth- and eleventh-century English kings were capable, if they chose, of intruding into the lives of their subjects and, in particular, of extracting monies from them to an extent greater than in any other contemporary polity in Western Europe. Nevertheless, we ought not to exaggerate their power. 'The task of government at a distance', Paul Hyams observes, 'was infinitely harder in eleventh-century Europe when the technology of domination was infin itely weaker than in our own time'.16 Nor should we assume that Anglo-Saxon kings or their agents always felt obliged to execute the judgments of royal courts. Whether a court's judgment was executed could depend upon whether the kjng or his local agent perceived a direct interest in the suit. An individual with wealth and power, such as Wulfbald, could defy with impunity the decision of a court if the dispute was internal to his family - and did not culminate in a major breach of the king's peace. Even in cases of this sort, the resolution of disputes ultimately lay in the consensus of the local community, and this is why we have the Old English memorandum in Sawyer

33 Libellu.s Ifthelwoldi, chaps. 53 and 54. in Liber Eliensis, book 2. chaps 42 and 43,137. 34 Libel/u.s IEthelwoldi, chap. 46 , in Liher Eliensis, book 2, chaps 35,133-4. 35 For which , sec Rees Davies, 'The Medieval State: the Tyranny of a Concept?', Journal of I-listorical Sociology, 16 (2003): 280-300, at p. 289. 36 Paul Hyams. 'Feud and the State in Lale Anglo-Saxon England' ,Journal of Brirish Studies, 40 (2001): 1-43, at pp. 42-3. THE LIMITS OF STATE ACTION IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 53

877. In writing an account of how Wulfbald's lands came into the hands of the king, the royal scribe created an 'official history' of those events and a public memory designed to protect the bequest against those who might later contest it, especially those in possession of rival charters.